Jackie Wayne (Salvatore) who was in the Broadway Cast of DAMN YANKEES as a replacement for the original kid says:
My parents took me to the circus when I was about 6 or 7, and I was really excited about the acrobats. I started tumbling around our tiny Brooklyn apartment, and my parents figured (before I fell down a flight of stairs) that I should take some lessons. I did...and the same school also taught tap, which I became interested in.
I advanced quickly, and started taking song-and-dance lessons from an old vaudevillian, in New York City. A casting call went out for a replacement for one of the boys in the original cast of "Damn Yankees", who had outgrown the part. I auditioned and got it, and stayed with the show for 2 years until closing, singing "You Gotta Have Heart" every night.
Some memories are vivid today. My best friends in the cast were Ray Walston, Jean Stapleton, and the stagehands. At intermission on matinee days, the stagehands would take me out in the alley behind the theater, and we'd play baseball...or just toss an old "spawl-deen" around. Most of the other shows on Broadway went to intermission around the same time...so one of the stagehands---Bill Brannigan was his name, sweet old guy---would take me with him through the back entrances to theaters, and we'd stop in and see the farm animals at "Li'l Abner"...or the strippers at "Gypsy"...or the gunslinging cowboys at "Destry Rides Again". It was pretty cool for a young kid.
As for Ray Walston...he was a big kid, himself. Also a bit of a hypochondriac. I remember he always carried a small rubber ball with him offstage...and he was constantly squeezing it, to relieve stress. It was an obsession. One performance, I was sitting in his dressing room as he went on for a scene. I mischievously decided to swipe the little ball and hide it. Well, when he got off between scenes, he was so frantic at not being able to find his "security blanket" that I thought he was gonna burst. I gave it back to him pretty quickly, because it looked like he was about to miss his next entrance. He was not amused. But he got over it quickly, and good-naturedly vowed to take revenge. (I don't think he ever did...)